Dilia Swart talks about her work in building strong safe communities to protect people from identity-based violence in London and elsewhere.

The latest Village In The City podcast welcomes Dilia Swart of Protection Approaches to talk about their work in building communities as a means of working to prevent identity-based violence. Protection Approaches was established as a UK charity in 2014 working to end all forms of identity-based violence motivated by the perpetrator's conceptualisation of their victim's identity, for example their race, gender, sexuality, religion or political affiliation. It encompasses hate crime, violent extremism, and genocide and affects individuals as well as entire groups or communities all around the world.

A key part of this work is helping to build active, safe and strong communities where marginalised communities and voices are included. They work to broker new and sustainable community relationships that will facilitate community-led change in some of London’s most disadvantaged boroughs, and also run (very good) community development programmes supported by the Mayor of London and the Home Office. These programme aim to encouraging community-led responses to hate crime and the prejudice and marginalisation that can lead to such crimes.

Dilia Swart is Senior Education Officer at Protection Approaches, and leads the delivery of their education programme working with schools to promote positive school cultures that foster tolerance and build resilience to divisive narratives. She was the co-founder of the Mostar Summer Youth Programme, an educational project in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and has degrees from Harvard and SOAS. Dilia and her colleagues share how the particularly tough issues of identity based violence can be tackled from a community perspective and share her experiences of working in London and elsewhere. The call was recorded in March 2021.

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